Very rarely we come across a record that defies categorisation. The Roundtable - Spinning Wheel album is one of those records. Uniquely British, it was originally released in 1969 and merged two popular musical genres of the time - early English medieval music and jazz-rock. Comprising a selection of well-chosen pop covers and a couple of original numbers, the album has been a cult record with collectors and leftfield DJs in the UK for some time.
Spinning Wheel is a faultlessly charming blend of funky brass, Hammond and rhythm twinned with the unlikely bedfellow of medieval instrumentation supplied by David Munrow and Christopher Hogwood.
Some reviews from 1970:
Record Buyer, April 1970:
The Roundtable is hinged on recorder player David Munrow and harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood. They take eight familiar pop numbers, add the powerful jazz-tinged arrangements of Arthur Johnson and Ken Moule, a dash of blues, gospel, ballad, but most important, a medieval flavour. The result is a compelling and fascinating album - it's quite something to hear a tinkling harpsichord and a whispy recorder fronting a wailing big band and it works. They transform the hackneyed 'Scarborough Fair', reveal the great melodic strength of Lennon/McCartney's 'Michelle' and come to a slam-bang finale with a fiery 'Spinning Wheel' where the brass match up to even Blood Sweat And Tears. The use of two drummers in the rhythm section gives added force.
Music Business Weekly, January 17, 1970:
Inventive jazz instrumental that opens with a standard funky bass beat intro before surprising by breaking into jig tempo and some excellent sax work. Rather infectious and an interesting taste of a forthcoming album.
Record Buying News, January 1970:
Having never before heard of a band called The Roundtable, I can only assume that they are recording studio session musicians. One thing I do know, however, is that this record is a fine example of instrumental 'pop' music. Given the radio plays, 'Saturday Gigue' could very well be a bg hit, because it will appeal to a wide range of record buyers. It is a fusion of jazz and pop, with an outstanding, repetitive chorus, and is one of those all-too-rare instrumental records of true quality. An added attraction for anyone contemplating buying this record is the fine recording of the modern-day standard 'Scarborough Fair'. An excellent piece of trumpet playing can be heard on this jazz-flavoured tune.
Music Business Weekly, 21st March 1970:
Intriguing British experimental jazz album, putting medieval instruments including a shwn, descant recorder, harpsichord and regal, with three flugelhorns, two woodwind and a two-drummer rhythm section. The material is mostly pop - 'Eli's Coming', 'This guy's in love with you' etc - inventively arranged by Ken Moule and Arthur Johnson. Best track is Moule's whirling 'Saturday Gigue'.
Disc And Music Echo, February 7th 1970:
The Roundtable are a fine instrumental jazzy outfit who on Spinning Wheel produce original and interesting arrangements of familiar songs. We liked the 'Fantasia on a Theme' by Lennon and McCartney and 'Scarborough Fair'. Others include 'Eli's Coming', 'Where do you go?', 'This guy's in love with you', 'Eli's Coming' and the title track.
Ilford and Red. Pic., February 11th 1970:
If you like a combination of jazz, folk, baroque, gospel and blues - kind of medieval music with pop influences - injected into eight well-known numbers and performed by a group of superb musicians plyaing such ancient instruments as shawms, crumhorns and regals, then you MUST buy this album. The stars are David Munrow (also on descant recorder) and Chris Hogwood (harpsichord), two highly-respected interpreters of medieval sounds, but the effect achieved when they mix with three flugelhorns, two woodwinds, piano, organ and a driving rhythm section powered by two drummers is quite amazing. You will hardly recognise Laura Nyro's 'Eli's Coming', Lennon & McCartney's 'Michelle', or Blood Sweat And Tears 'Spinning Wheel'. 'Scarborough Fair' and 'This guy's in love with you' are also gems and the arrangements are so complex that it will take you a dozen plays to pick out everything that is going on. It is impossible to describe the beauty or fascinating rhythms on paper. All I can say is that it is one of the finest albums I have ever recommended.
Personnel:
Jackie Armstrong (trombone)
Kenny Baker (trumpet)
Eddie Blair (trumpet)
Greg Bowen (trumpet)
Leon Calvert (flugelhorn, trumpet)
Kenny Clare (drums)
Jeff Clyne (bass)
Johnny Edwards (trombone)
Christopher Hogwood (harpsichord, organ)
Don Lusher (trombone)
John Marshall (trombone)
David Munrow (sackbut, crumhorn, descant recorder)
Pete Morgan (bass)
Pete Swinfield (reeds)
Roy Willocks (reeds)
Tracklist:
01. Eli's Coming (Nyro) 6.02
02. (Fantasia On A Theme By Lennon And McCartney) Michelle (Lennon/McCartney) 2.52
03. Saturday Gigue (Moule) 2.50
04. Girl I Used To Know (Johnson/Barnes) 3.09
05. Scarborough Fair (Traditional) 4.56
06. This Guy's In Love With You (Bacharach/David) 4.01
07. Where Do You Go? (Wilder) 3.30
08. Spinning Wheel (Thomas) 4.15
ARMU 2038
ARMU 2038 (zippyshare)
And here´s an interview with producer Ken Barnes about this very special album:
LS: How did the idea for the Roundtable album materialize?
KB: I was a director of the Sutton Sound recording studio in Soho; it's now the Sony building. This was in 1969 and we'd made a bit of a dent in the industry; I'd been to New York and got some clients and we were recording all sorts of different things and I was studio manager and was getting the business in. One of the directors was a friend of [the Early Music Consort's] David Munrow and they wanted to make an album, and they thought about what was the best way to present them. They'd done some Early Music Consort type of albums before and we thought it would be good to do a little experiment. We actually did two; one with Indian music combined with jazz, after the fashion of Ravi Shankar and Stan Tracey. We got some Indian musicians in and some jazz musicians and we called it 'Curried Jazz', and it was very successful. So we thought about other musical hybrids that we could do and we got the early music together with a jazz-rock backing. We kicked the idea around and had quite a few meetings about it and then I brought in Ken Moule to do the recording. He booked some good guys and we went in and did it all in about three sessions. It was inspired a little bit by Blood, Sweat & Tears, so we named the album 'Spinning Wheel'. The name of the group was mine; I thought that Roundtable had a medieval feel to it but the 'round' element went well with the jazz ideas.
LS: How did you come to work with Sutton Sound?
KB: I'd been recording and they just came to me as they thought I would be a good guy to head up their commercial side. The company didn't live too long as we couldn't renew the lease on the studio. We had money, but we couldn't go past the lease date on the building and they were bought up. It was a shame as we had the potential to be a very important studio and we did a lot of work in the two or three years that we were there. After that I got a job as the European product manager for Ampex. I had to commute from my flat in Twickenham to the factory they had in Neuville in Belgium and I was responsible for tape production. It was the heyday of the eight-track tape then and I set up a series of tapes called 'Music For The Motorway' with lots of session stuff. It was all very short-lived though and it swung straight away over to cassettes. I did that for a couple of years, and as I'd been producing for them I decided that there was more for me on that side of things. The next thing I knew I was working internationally as a freelance producer.
LS: What was it to work with such highly regarded classical musicians?
KB: They were OK. David Munrow was always a little bit dour; he was a very fine musician and he took it all very seriously. Christopher Hogwood was a very fine keyboard player and he did the harpsichord, then we had things on it like a sackbut, which gave it all a very different flavour.
LS: How did you hear of their expertise in this field?
KB: As I said, David Munrow was a friend of one of the directors and he was doing concerts at the time that were quite well received. I thought it was a wonderful idea to be playing music from medieval times and they wanted to make an album that was a little different to the kind of stuff they had recorded before. The arrangements had to be very carefully structured so that they didn't upset the identity of the early music consorts, so that it didn't look like a tree graft. Ken wasn't always happy about everything. He'd ask if we thought it was OK and we'd give very careful thought to it and maybe change things, even on the studio floor, if they didn't work. I'd say that it was more inspiration before anything else. We didn't want it to seem like it was too pretentious; we wanted to create something that would have listening appeal across a fairly broad spectrum. I don't know if we succeeded, but we tried.
LS: Was the mass-appeal concept at the bottom of choosing songs that were currently popular?
KB: Yes, we wanted to make sure that there was some commercial angle, or some recognition angle where people would see it and there would be at least some familiar material. Of course, 'Scarborough Fair' was period material in itself, long before Paul Simon picked it up.
LS: Your own composition 'The Girl I Used To Know' has a very authentic flavour to it.
KB: Arthur Johnson had a fragment of a melody that I thought was rather good and I just embellished on it further. We did actually do a lyric for it, but I wasn't too happy with it. We didn't record it for that album, but it did appear on another later on, and we really wanted it onto the Roundtable record as it was a song that Sutton Sound were able to publish.
LS: Was 'Saturday Gigue' written specifically for this project?
KB: Yes, it was something that Ken Moule had kicking around and I think it was called that either because he wrote it on a Saturday or that we recorded it on a Saturday.
LS: How well did the Roundtable record sell at the time?
KB: I really don't know. I never saw any sales figures for it, but it did get some pretty good reviews and it was fairly well distributed. I think that President did a good job with it. I don't want to put President down or anything, but maybe it should have gone to a bigger label and we might have made more of it. When President showed an interest I think that whoever was doing the selling of it, and I wasn't involved in that, probably licensed it to the first one that came along, just to do the deal. But they did do a nice job on it, so everyone was happy.
LS: The sleeve is wonderful, do you have any idea who is responsible for that?
KB: That would have come from President's art department.
LS: How did the jazz players react to working with all of the other strange instrumentation?
KB: They really liked it! There was a real sense of camaraderie between the two sides, and I know they got on as people. Even once or twice during the sessions David Munrow would smile, and he was a very serious young man. All of the jazz guys were pleased because for them it represented something different to what they were normally doing. Those guys would be playing two or three sessions a day at those times; going from Geoff Love and a Manuel session in the morning to working with Quincy Jones or Henry Mancini in the afternoon. Record companies would not have existed if it were not for those musicians, yet today they don't seem to have any place in the scheme of things.
LS: Did the studio engineers have to make any special provisions for all of the strange instruments?
KB: It was recorded in the Sutton Sound studio, and the whole thing had to be very well set up. The engineer was Mike Hall, with me producing and Mark Sutton, one of the directors, was probably the second engineer.
LS: We believe David Munrow committed suicide in the mid-1970's.
KB: It wouldn't surprise me. I didn't know him very well; but he looked like a deeply serious young man who could have been drawn to depression, and yet on these sessions I saw him smile a few times. He did a lot of work for the BBC and he was never short of work; I don't know if he felt that his career was limited or not, but his suicide might not have had anything to do with that. He was a brilliant musician and I respected him enormously. He must have only been in his thirties when he died. I never kept in touch with Christopher Hogwood, but he was a very charming and bright guy and a very skilled player.